Reviewer's Bio

Robert Jørgensen
Loving music since childhood and still flourishing decades later.

  I was born in 1954, making me a boomer and today somewhat of an old fart. During my youth, I grew up with music although my mother was more of what I would term a consumer whereas my father loved music. Besides his love of classical music which was largely focused on 19th century symphonic music from Beethoven through Brahms to the late century Russians, especially Tchaikovsky, my father loved hi-fi.

In the late 1950s we not only had a reel-to-reel recorder but where other families had a radio my father bought an FM tuner that was connected to the two 15 Watt amplifiers built into our TV. This came from a very reputable Danish radio and TV manufacturer TO-R.

Starting at the age of 13, I went through five sets of loudspeakers before I was 21. Several of these I put together myself. Some were different quarter-wave horns, a pair of Acousta horns with Coral Beta-8 units, and a pair of Radford omni-directional transmission-line speakers each sporting two 10" woofers. These last were serious stuff and cost me all of my student loans that year.

I moved to Holland at 21 and worked as a computer programmer and later in technical and sales support. Besides being an avid reader of the Danish High Fidelity magazine and Hi-Fi News & Record Review, I used to visit hi-fi exhibitions in Denmark, Germany, France, and the UK. I have very fond memories of traveling on the train up from London to Harrogate in Yorkshire in 1977. It was beautiful weather; a great show and I had an altogether long but wonderful day.

In 1977 / 1978 I got the idea that it might be interesting trying to import audio equipment into Holland. It was during my visit to the Heathrow Exhibition (I think) that I noticed a pair of mono amps behind some speakers. The sound in the room had caught my attention and I inquired about the amps. They were from a new company called Esoteric Audio Research and designed by Tim de Paravicini. There is much more to tell, but I became an importer of these as well as tonearms from Mörch in Denmark and loudspeakers from Rogers, the most famous which was the Rogers LS3/5A, from the UK. I was not the world’s greatest businessman so after moving to Belgium in 1980 I phased out the business.

For the rest of the 1980s I was busy working and taking care of my growing family (wife and four daughters) to do more than play music. During the 1990s I was again visiting hi-fi shows and began writing show reports and some reviews for Danish High Fidelity and later for Soundstage.com online. Unfortunately, the printed magazine business forced High Fidelity to close.

In 2017 I moved from Brussels, Belgium, where I had been based for 37 years, back to Copenhagen, which I left in 1975. Although our lovely flat is fine my room is not too large at 17.8 square meters, which translates approximately into 192 square feet. It does have good sound without too many problems but the wall separating us from the neighbors could easily have been more substantial. I limit myself to playing loud during the daytime.

I have always been demanding to find out why something sounded better than something else. I still want to know.